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Monthly Archives: April 2014

When I finished my hat on Thursday I panicked a little—whatever to knit next? and what will I take to work on at the Gather Here brunch?!?—but (with a little push from a friend) decided the Isla Wrap (free pattern here), a sort of capelet/cowl/shoulder covering thing, would be a good way to teach myself circular knitting. Bonus: I could add stripes and learn how to switch yarns mid-project. Hooray!

I did things right-ish this time and actually knitted a test swatch, given that I ignored the pattern’s instructions about yarn weight and bought a worsted weight instead of a sport weight yarn (REBEL. Or maybe I just don’t know what I’m doing. Also, check out my fancy new knitting lingo!).

So far so good. The pattern specifies that “the blocked gauge of 4 inches squared is approximately 17 stitches across by 27 rows long.” Mine was 16 stitches by 19 rows, assuming I counted correctly. So I decided to make the small, following the pattern exactly, and I expect it to turn out a bit bigger (knock on wood), which is perfect because I’m actually in the medium size range. (If not, my niece is getting a sweet capelet!)

I ended up spending almost three hours at the Gather brunch talking about everything from Francoist Spain to jogging strollers to 3D printing (in other words, it was awesome and you should all totally go), after which things looked like this:

(Yes, that is an old episode of Sherlock in the background. Yes, it is as amazing the second time around.)

I made a quick trip to the Cambridge Quilt Shop on my way home to pick up fabric to finally bind the pink and gold quilt—another post for another day—then came home and knitted. And knitted. And knitted.

And now I have stripes! I’m amazed at how quickly this is coming together, though I did spend probably four focused hours of knitting on it (six-ish total, maybe, with chatting and Sherlock-ing). The circular needles—I’m using 29″ Clover bamboo needles in size 8—took a while to get used to (the plasticky cable is still fairly stiff and twisty, despite my attempts to soften it with hot water), but once I had around ten rounds on them, things started to lay correctly and make more sense.

And the stripes? So easy. I don’t know why I thought this was a crazy SuperKnitter skill. Others have explained it better, but you basically knot the new yarn around the old yarn and then start using it. Magic.

This is possibly cooler than the time I made a dress, considering how soft and fuzzy the yarn swaddling my head right now is.

Despite my noise about falling behind and being overwhelmed by projects, this actually came together fairly quickly: a couple of hours while watching TV, a stint at the new office knitting club, and half an hour tonight to finish the last two rows, cinch up the top, sew up the edge, and snap a few hasty photos before dusk.

I definitely made mistakes—at one point I must have either knitted the same row twice or skipped a row, as part of the hat is knitted inside out. I (very) briefly debated ripping it out, but I decided I didn’t really care. Same with sewing up the seam: I looked this up, then realized I couldn’t really tell the different between the purl loops and the knit loops and the bottom loops and the top loops, so I winged it.

Despite this, though: it fits! On my head! And is warm and soft and comfortable! And is, recognizably so, a hat!

So many beautiful plans I’ve made, and so little time I’ve spent working on them. I’m writing this mostly to give myself a firm nudge by publicly committing to making beautiful things, rather than just dreaming about them.

So: work continues on the hat, which at this point looks like a slightly misshapen rectangle (I started with 84 stitches—I swear, I counted them thrice—but found myself working with over 90 the other day. How?) and has barely escaped the clutches of my overly curious cats multiple times over the past few weeks. (My beautifully wound ball of yarn is now an unwound tangle, thanks to them.) I’m nearly at the finish line, I think, and am hoping to be even closer after tackling the last few dozen rows at tomorrow’s office knitting club and again at Saturday’s Crafter’s Brunch at Gather Here (do you go to this? do you want to go? I’m thinking about bringing muffins to help introduce myself and convince people there to be nice to me and teach me how to properly cast off).

Work also continues(-ish) on the peach and gold quilt, which I thought I had blogged about much more but am now realizing I haven’t. To catch you up:

The bedroom floor makes a great basting surface

This is the first quilt I ever started making, thanks to the “Start Quilting” class at Cambridge Quilt Shop. It was relegated to the back burner while I rushed through the Quilts for Kids quilt, but I finished the top over a month ago, pieced together the backing without having to buy any new fabric (quite proud of this), and finally sandwiched it together a week or so ago. I’m looking forward to finishing it, which seems like it will mark my transition from someone who made a quilt once to someone who actually makes quilts, plural.

I ambitiously backpacked my knitting into remote west central Maine this weekend, where I planned to curl up in front of a wood stove at the beautiful Flagstaff Lake Hut and finish my hat. Instead, I spent most of Saturday afternoon trying to sleep away a migraine and failed to do any crafting at all.

Sunday night was spent on rows 1-16 of the cobblestone pattern for this knitted hat while watching Game of Thrones; I followed up last night with a dozen more rows and an old episode of Sherlock. In other words: finally achieving my ideals of pure DIY geekery.

Despite a few initial stumbles, I’m quickly falling in love with knitting. I like that it’s small and portable and quiet, and now that I’ve sort of gotten the hang of it, I’m enjoying the Zen of slowly counting off stitches and rows, so much so that I’m assembling quite a backlog of sewing projects that are sitting forlornly on my craft table while I curl up with my ball of yarn every night. I should really do something about that, but instead I’m dreaming about what comes next for me and my knitting needles. Behold, an ambitious gallery of future knitting endeavors: